I cover entrepreneurs, people who create value (and make money) out of the ideas in their heads. I spent three years on staff at Forbes before leaving to start Haymaker , a PR firm for startups, in May 2014. (Don't worry, I never write about my clients.) In the age of "The Social Network" myth, I get a kick out of delving into the reality of launching a business. Before joining Forbes I spent a year toiling in startup obscurity at Squidjob.com. Since my bedroom was the office, I never had to sleep under my desk. Comments, tips and forceful criticism are appreciated.

The Facebook Job Board Is Here: Recruiting Will Never Look The Same

FacebookFacebook announced its long-awaited job board this morning, ushering in a new era of online recruiting and, eventually, what’s likely to be an important new source of revenue for the company. After a yearlong “Social Jobs Partnership” with the U.S. Department of Labor and other government agencies, the company released the Social Jobs Partnership application today, an interactive job board that aggregates 1.7 million openings from recruiting companies already working on the platform, including Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Jobvite, DirectEmployers and Monster.com.

Though a spokesperson for the company insists the announcement does not mean Facebook is entering the recruiting industry, that statement appears far-fetched given the capability of the application. The page allows users to search for jobs by location, industry and skill; apply to them directly through Facebook; and then share the jobs to their social network. Its developer partners also believe Facebook is making a clear statement of its intentions. “Facebook is launching a jobs page within Facebook,” notes Stephane Le Viet, founder and CEO of Work4 Labs. “This is a very big disruption in a very large space.”

The company’s own blog post reveals some telling statistics about the potential for recruiting over the platform. According to Facebook, half of employers in the U.S. use the social network during their hiring process. Of those companies already using Facebook to engage with customers, 54 percent anticipate using it more heavily in their recruitment efforts in the future. Given those numbers, the lucrative nature of the recruitment industry and the success of companies like Work4 Labs—not to mention increasing pressure from battered shareholders—it appears likely that Facebook will seek monetize recruitment efforts at some point soon.

Le Viet surmises that the current application is just an early, lightweight version intended to test recruiting on the platform. It also serves to trigger a PR push letting the general public know that the social network is now a place to find jobs. A more robust version may eventually mean users will see more recruitment-related activity on their newsfeeds.

The Social Jobs Partnership was meant to serve as a consortium to guide the company’s recruitment offering.

So does November 14, 2012 mark the beginning of the end for LinkedInLinkedIn? The varied demographics of Facebook certainly differ from LinkedIn’s 175 million older, college-educated users. Le Viet’s Work4 Labs acknowledges this reality, focusing on entry-level and hourly positions rather than the salaried openings that LinkedIn has covered. And as Forbes contributor George Anders noted in a July cover story, LinkedIn Recruiter, the company’s enterprise recruitment tool, is the company’s core business. They have a three-year head start and a product with cachet among recruiters said to rival that of BloombergBloomberg terminals among traders. LinkedIn is also a trusted, professional brand created for the explicit purpose of business networking. Older employees may not feel comfortable mixing work with a social platform better known for kegstand photos.

The sheer size of Facebook’s user base however, means that the company can slice the population a number of different ways. Though only 22 percent of users are above the age of 45, that’s still 220 million people–more than LinkedIn’s entire platform. And Facebook has already been used effectively to recruit lower-skilled workers. A foothold in the lower end of the market could serve as a nice starting point for moving upstream and eating LinkedIn’s business. The twenty-somethings who tend profiles on both LinkedIn and Facebook may not care where their next job comes from.

What is certain? Traditional online job boards like Monster.com are on the way out. While Monster has seen its market share and stock price plummet in recent years, LinkedIn has soared and Facebook’s developer partners–Work4 Labs, BranchOut and Jobvite–have raised tens of millions of dollars to pursue social graph-based recruiting models. The future of recruiting is decidedly social.

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Another reason to spend time on Facebook. Didn’t they say themselves last week that Facebook is like cake, “it’s never a good idea to have to much”. Stop trying to have it all and focus what your good at. Continue to be a platform for friends to be passive aggressively targeted by advertisers and have their whole life tracked in one place.

i agree. Facebook is very smart for doing this, as they’re tapping into a huge market and their sheer size gives them an edge, however the golden rule (especially for something such as recruitment) quality will always win over quantity. I’d much prefer having a candidate matched to my company (and vice versa as a seeker) then have random, unqualified applicants from Siberia, because they clicked on the wrong link. This also poses the question, will facebook ‘promote’ searching postings in exchange for money? I’m tired of job postings, I feel like we need a better platform. Perhaps one that could match certain job pre-requisites to applicants skill/experience sets.

While social networking is the one guaranteed way to get a good career, facebook has gone beyond simple networking and embodied our lives. I would hesitate to seek employment through Facebook, rather, I believe that other sites which operate anonymously and link humans to humans based on mutual benefits will, in the long term, better serve the global community.

Agreed. Seems like overkill. I get the idea of having everything in one place so it’s easily accessible, but Facebook was created purely for social connection within a circle, and should be avoided from being brought into the professional world as much as possible.

Facebook’s main concern should be creating an environment for inter-personal relationships. They call these relationships friendships. Job networking is not related to this and should not be a part of Facebook’s goals.

Facebook just doesn’t seem like the right place to go to explore serious career options. It is a social networking site, and I think most people treat it with the same lightness that they would bring into a social situation. I think that there needs to be a distinction between sites like Facebook and sites which approach online networking with a more professional air.

This is blurring the line between social media and professional media. One small misstep when applying on facebook jobs and next thing you know the whole world (including your boss) knows you’re actively looking for a job. The more employers look at prospective employees’ social media, the less they should be expecting to discover and the greater potential for secrecy or even blatant deception.

Facebook should have done this year’s ago. They have such an enormous user base yet they are so fearful of taking risks and innovating. Its ideas such as these that will keep them relevant and help them grow even further.